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About Celina

Product Marketer @Zoho. I am an avid reader, witty and an ambivert by nature. A hybrid of marketing and product management who prefers listening to customers. Connect and talk with me anytime at celina@zohocorp.com

Collaborate via email, now for the Bugs module!
We’ve enhanced the bug comments feature. Previously, you had to login to Zoho Projects and post comments directly under each bug. But now, you can add a comment by just replying to the bug notification email you get. Also, you can attach files to a bug by email too.

A sample screen grab of the unique bug email address.

Here’s the bug comment added via email.

Set Notifications for Reporter / Assignee of Bug Comments
Whenever you add a comment to a bug, you can set email notifications for the Reporter / Assignee. When a comment gets added to the bug the next time, the Reporter / Assignee will get notified by email.

Reorder your MilestonesYou can now reorder your milestones using the Reorder button.

All Milestones ViewWe’ve now furnished an All Milestones view which shows Upcoming, Overdue and Completed milestones across all projects of your portal. This view is available for you in the My Home tab. So, you will no longer be limited to viewing milestones for a single project alone.

We’d like to take you through some of the new features which were rolled out in our recent update so that you can start using them as part of your existing Zoho Projects. Here’s a quick summary of what’s new in this update.

1. Visual view of Task List
Our existing task list has a list view showing all details of a task. We’ve now added the option to show the task list in chart view, so that a user can quickly and visually grasp the details of a task list.
Where can you find this new chart view?Click on Task List action menu, select the Chart View and it will display a graphical view of your task list. In addition, you can also take a print out of the task list chart for your reference.

2. Import Users from Google Apps

In one of our previous updates, we had provided an option to import your contacts and users from Zoho CRM and Zoho Business. This option has now been extended to our Google Apps Users too. So, you can now import all your Google Apps users with ease in few quick steps into Zoho Projects.
User Access:
Portal Owner, Administrators and Managers have the privilege to import users from their Google Apps domain.
3. Client Permissions for Bugs Module

We’ve provided an option called Client Permissions in the Bugs
module that allows you to control the external bugs viewed by client users / client company.
4. View projects based on clients

In My Home tab, you can now view the projects based on clients for whom the project is being done. You can mark Primary Client for a project, under which the project will be listed. There are a set of options added a) to mark the Primary Client using Associate Primary Client b) Edit Project and c) delete a project using Delete Project - all in just few clicks.

5. Create a Project Overview

Create an overview of your project to help your team members and clients quickly understand the purpose and scope of this project. You can specify your project goals too.
6. Tab customization for Clients
Finally, the ‘tab customization’ within portals is extended to client users too. The Portal Administrator can customize tabs for client users as well as for a client company.

Here’s a quick tutorial which we’ve put together to help you get started.

We hope you find these new features useful and that they help you connect better with your project team!

Give them a try and tell us what you think at support@zohoprojects.com. You can also share your comments here, on Facebook or tweet @zoho.

We recently spoke to the team behind
Raw Engineering, a company that specializes in web and mobile application development about how they have been using Zoho Projects. With offices and clients in San Francisco and Mumbai, this 35-person company is on a mission to solve the toughest web architecture and integration challenges. To that end, Raw Engineering has built its core development expertise in .NET, Java, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Mobile and related Web 2.0 and rich internet application technologies. The company has built its reputation with highly qualified engineers, competitive rates and technical integrity.

Raw Engineering required a collaborative project management solution for its application development projects. We needed a solution that could enable 30 users working on 10 projects to track bugs and quality assurance, among other tasks. In addition to a rich feature set, Raw Engineering developers wanted an application that was easy to use, integrated with third-party applications like Google Apps and also an affordable
project management software.

We tried a lot of different applications before Zoho Projects. Applications like
Unfuddle, Assembla and Basecamp were just harder to use

and didn’t have all the features Zoho offered. Zoho Projects was the right fit. And the integration with Gmail – which lets us create bug entries directly from Gmail – was a big feature that sold
(the concept of using Zoho Projects to)

the team. That integration helps keep the whole team organized and in sync.

What are the benefits provided by Zoho Projects?

Tasks and Bug Tracking :

Raw engineering developers tracked bugs, tasks with quality assurance in no time by which they recognized the value of the bug tracking, tasks, milestones combined with support and group chat of Zoho Projects which put them all on the same page and on top of the projects.

Project Wiki

turned out to be an unexpected bonus. Company developers use the project wiki to maintain an internal knowledge base and to share documentation with their clients.

Project Forums

Questions and answers from the raw engineering user forums are also brought back into Project forums. This way the expert knowledge is tapped and captured in a single place for future developments.

Google Apps Integration

Other products from Google Apps Marketplace are good in specific areas, but they didn’t integrate as well with third-party apps like Gmail, felt Nishant Patel. But, Zoho Projects brought it all together, has a one solution that’s really simple, fast and responsive – easy to use and administer.

Gmail Contextual Gadgets

The integration with Gmail, which allowed us to create tasks and bug entries directly from right within their Gmail was a big feature that sold (the concept of using Zoho Projects to) the team. In addition, it kept the whole team organized and in sync on latest happenings going on in a project.

Here’s a nice snap of the Raw Engineering team working on a mobile project.

Final thoughts on Zoho?

As a web application development shop, Raw Engineering almost exclusively uses web-based products and has used Zoho applications prior to Zoho Projects. About four-five years ago, we began adopting Zoho online applications, starting with productivity applications such as Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, and Zoho Show.

We’ve been following Zoho for a long time. The world of cloud computing is something that we’re following very closely as something that raw engineering specializes in for our clients. So using Zoho Projects, an online tool, to help improve our company and improve our
project management overall is a huge validation of
Zoho and the online philosophy. As a team, we’re all using the same tool, and we’re all on the same page and on top of our projects” said Patel.

If you would like to share your experience with Zoho Projects too,
write to us now!

Over the past few months we’ve been working hard on making our
Zoho Projects interface flexible and easy-to-use, based on the suggestions sent by our customers. We had announced these changes on our homepage and you might have noticed the preview at http://preprojects.zoho.com. Today we’re delighted to announce the redesigned user interface of Zoho Projects along with some exciting features.

We know that you use Zoho Projects for building your business by connecting with your project teams and clients. Now we want to make your work life easier with a more appealing user interface so that you can plan, communicate and collaborate more efficiently than ever before.
Here’s a quick summary of what’s new in this release:

Tasks & MilestonesEasy-to-use interface for task management and enhanced task details page with more information – task notes, log hours, dependency, recent updates. In addition, you can have a detailed visual view of your open and closed tasks, task lists and milestones as task reports.

Import your Contacts
Import your contacts and users from your Zoho CRM and Zoho Business
account in few easy steps. From Zoho CRM, you can now import your project as well as client users for your project portal. This way you can quickly add bulk users with ease.

Contextual Reports
We’ve removed the Reports tab. No Worries! Instead, you can instantly view reports contextually in the respective tabs. Like the Gantt View and Task Reports under Tasks and Milestones. And Bug, Timesheet & File upload statistics in the respective tabs.

Custom Filters for Bugs
Start creating your own custom filters based on users, severity, status, priority and create your views based on these filters in the Bugs module of Zoho Projects.

Project Dashboard & Group Chat
Project Dashboard got spiced up with task progress and bug status reports along with the project overview. When you visit the chat tab, you can find chat rooms to select and start your discussions right away.

We’d already received a couple of encouraging tweets on this new release

Play around with the new user interface available at http://www.zoho.com/projects and we’d love to hear your views and ideas on the new Zoho Projects. Please let us know what you think either in the comments section or mail us at support@zohoprojects.com.

We run on email -day in day out- as it has become an essential part of business. But sometimes email is a bit of a distraction from what you are really working on.At Zoho we love the concept of contextual integration - which means that you don’t need to be switching around apps to do the things you want to do. Instead, the apps and data should be available to you in context. We use that as a guiding principle throughout our extensive portfolio of 20+ apps.But of course, it’s not just about Zoho apps.Today we’re excited to announce the Zoho Projects Gmail Contextual Gadgets for Google Apps users, which makes it easy to manage your projects, tasks and more in Zoho Projects. The best part is – all this is done right within your email – without leaving Gmail or your inbox.

The Gmail Contextual gadget allows you to:

Create a project in Zoho Projects from your email message

Transform your email into an actionable task in Zoho Projects

Convert an intelligent idea sent through an email into a forum post

Assign a task to any of your team members right from within your Gmail message

Zoho Projects Gmail Contextual Gadget greatly accelerates user adoption by bringing the project directly to your users in context with the project flow. In addition, it drastically improves productivity, saves lot of time and makes life easier for your project management team.Give it a try! Invite your project team and see how it adds power to your work process. If you are using Zoho Projects for Google Apps, you can now use the Zoho Projects Contextual Gadgets.Let us know in the comments about this new feature addition or email us at support@zohoprojects.com

We love listening to our customers, and quite a number of you told us that the email collaboration wasn’t flexible enough to let you add a task, file a bug or upload a document. Today, we’re delighted to announce the
enhanced email collaboration feature which makes things easier for your whole project crew. From now on, you can directly add tasks, file bugs and upload documents in Zoho Projects simply through an email.

Where can you find the email alias for a project ?

Go to your dashboard tab and you will find a list of unique email addresses listed for Tasks, Forums and Documents module. Grab the relevant email address and start shooting tasks from your email. It’s simple. Isn’t it? This is a fun, lively way to add tasks, upload your files, post a forum topic and let the conversation take the lead – brainstorm, negotiate, laugh.

See the presentation below and find quick ways to collaborate with projects via an email. Have a look and let us know your thoughts.

Add Custom Fields for Bugs

In developing the email collaboration feature, we also took the opportunity to include custom fields with greater flexibility for a better way of
tracking bugs. You’ll now find various options stocked to create custom fields for bugs module. Start creating your own text, numeric and date field – just like the way you wish!

Organize Project Tabs

Nothing can be more frustrating than to see lots of tabs displayed and there is no way to remove the unused ones. We’ve implemented the Organize Tabs option which is very useful when you are using only few tabs for a project. It provides an option to conveniently disable unused tabs and prioritize other tabs according to the way your project works.

Note:

Portal administrator is
the one who can remove tabs for the entire portal while rest of the
users have a privilege to only reorder tabs.

Option to change first day of a week

A recent tweet from a Zoho Projects user:

@zohoprojects #zohoprojects should have a customization option to change the first day of the week from sunday to monday. We miss it!

We did it! Go to Settings tab, click on Date/Format Settings and there you’ll find the option to change the first day of a week to Sunday or Monday.

It’s not just about a new feature addition or an enhancement – it’s how you thoughtfully apply it. So find ways for your project team to work with all these new enhancements. We hope you’d start using these features in
Zoho Projects and share your experience with us at
support@zohoprojects.com.

When dealing with different projects and different customers during the day, it becomes tough to remember what you were doing for each and every customer. Most of the time, we tend to forget half of the things. Typically, there is a need to track both billable and non-billable hours spent for billing each customer and keep track of the productive work done during the day. Zoho Projects’ Timesheet module helps ease some of these painpoints.

Here is a short video which explains the different ways to maximize your productivity with the Timesheet module in Zoho Projects.

Let’s see the enhancements done in the recent update to Timesheet.

Stopwatch
A stopwatch is included in tasks so that you can keep track of the time while you are working on a task. It is a constant reminder that helps you to stay on-task and quickly complete your work.

Easy to use Interface
We’ve made the time tracking interface easy to use by making the ‘List View’ as the default one to see all your log entries from a single place.

Billing for Payments
Timesheet is integrated with Zoho Invoice so that you can generate an invoice for your billable hours and send it for client payments.